Articles found Sept 2, 2012
US drones attack again in Pakistan
by The Canadian Press Sep 1, 2012 / 10:55 am
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U.S. drones fired a barrage of missiles at a vehicle and a house in a Pakistani tribal area bordering Afghanistan Saturday, killing at least five suspected militants, Pakistani officials said.
The strikes in the North Waziristan tribal area were the first since news that a top commander of the powerful Haqqani militant network was killed in a drone strike late last month, also in the tribal region.
Two intelligence officials, speaking on condition of anonymity because they are not authorized to brief the media, said U.S. drones fired seven missiles at targets in the village of Degan in an area of North Waziristan close to the Afghan border.
They said the area is dominated by anti-American militant commander Hafiz Gul Bahadur, but they did not know whether the men killed belonged to his group.
Bahadur's faction is alleged to have been involved in frequent attacks on U.S. troops in Afghanistan, but generally shies away from carrying out operations inside Pakistan. Several recent drone strikes have killed militants affiliated with Bahadur's group.
The CIA-run drone program is controversial in Pakistan.
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Military model might help cure what ails N.S. health-care system
September 1, 2012 - 4:01am By TIM DUNNE
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A Canadian medical technician radioed for advice to physician assistant Chief Petty Officer Peter Jardine at his forward operating base in Afghanistan. A military policeman had lost both legs and an arm to an IED and was bleeding out. He wanted to make sure he was doing everything right until the helicopter arrived.
The military policeman survived.
Now at Halifax’s Formation Health Services, CPO Jardine has fewer emergency calls. As a military physician assistant (PA), he is a member of a profession that partners with physicians as treatment extenders. His civilian colleagues, who go by the same moniker, are unknown in Nova Scotia but are well-established in New Brunswick, Manitoba and Ontario. Alberta will soon launch a pilot project.
CPO Jardine says, “We work closely with a supervising physician to develop a scope of practice and we do whatever the doctor feels comfortable with us doing. That can be minor surgery, toenail removal, suturing, removal of lymphomas, lumps and bumps, prescriptions — as long as the supervising physician is comfortable with it.”
Canada’s first PA was sick berth CPO First Class Clement Filewod, who joined HMCS Rainbow in August 1910. The navy’s “physician extenders” provided continuous health care during the Second World War, in Korea and today in the surface and submarine fleets. The Canadian Army adopted the physician extender model for combat medics during the Korean War.
Twenty-three candidates are accepted into the military’s PA training program annually.
“Historically, people needed 15 to 20 years of experience,” Jardine noted. “It would take that long to be rated highly enough to be accepted into the profession. Today, some can qualify with 12 years of service.”
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Suicide attack in Afghanistan kills 12 near U.S. base
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September 1, 2012
Two suicide attackers, one driving a fuel tanker, blew themselves up near a U.S. base in eastern Afghanistan on Saturday, killing at least 12 people, officials said.
The attack around dawn in the town of Sayed Abad in Wardak province, about 70 kilometres from Kabul, served as a reminder that even after a decade of fighting, tens of thousands of U.S. and foreign troops are still engaged in a war that shows no signs of slowing down despite the start of a withdrawal of coalition forces.
The U.S.-led NATO coalition said that no American or coalition troops were killed in the blasts. It confirmed that a number of troops were wounded, but did not say how many, in accordance with coalition policy.
Shahidullah Shadid, a spokesman for the Wardak provincial governor, said one suicide bomber detonated a vest rigged with explosives outside a compound housing the district governor's office, while another in a fuel tanker detonated his bomb on a road separating the compound from the base. He said the dead included eight civilians and four Afghan police.
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U.S. Halting Program to Train Afghan Recruits
By GRAHAM BOWLEY and RICHARD A. OPPEL Jr. September 2, 2012
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KABUL, Afghanistan — The training of Afghan Local Police and special operations forces has been put on hold while their American trainers conduct stricter vetting to try to root out any infiltrators or new recruits who could pose risks to the coalition troops working with them, American officials say.
The move does not affect the vast majority of Afghan forces — more than 350,000 Afghan National Army soldiers and Afghan National Police members — who are still being trained and are still working in the field with American and NATO counterparts, military officials said. The action was first reported online by The Washington Post.
“The training is definitely still going on for the regular A.N.A. and A.N.P.,” said Maj. Steve Neta of the Canadian Air Force, a spokesman for the NATO training mission in Afghanistan. At any given time, there are 25,000 Afghan soldiers and more than 4,000 Afghan national policemen in training, and that is continuing, he said.
But a rash of recent attacks by Afghan forces on American and NATO troops has led American Special Operations commanders in Afghanistan to put a hold on the training of those Afghan units overseen by American Special Operations forces: Afghan Local Police and special forces units, which, combined, number over 20,000, or roughly seven percent of all Afghan forces.
“The training of our partner forces has been paused while we go through this revetting,” said a spokesman for American Special Operations. The spokesman, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the suspension affects only Afghan Local Police and Afghan special operations and commando forces.
He said the revetting of the Afghan Special Operations had started on Aug. 22 and had already been completed. Training of recruits to these forces had resumed after a few days, he said.
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In Afghanistan, Roya Mahboob Connects Girls With Computers
by Angela Shah Sep 1, 2012
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The 25-year-old is at once exhilarated and shy. A woman is not supposed to attract so much attention. Just minutes earlier, a male colleague offered her a word to the wise as he gently pulled down her head scarf to cover her throat and shoulders, exposed from the scoop-necked top she wore, saying: “There are conservative men inside.”
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On this day in late May, the girls at Baghnazargah High School were getting computers and Internet access for the first time. Mahboob’s IT company, Afghan Citadel Services, or ACS, installed the technology lab as part of a project to help wire schools in Herat, and Mahboob offered welcome remarks as a panel of bearded men dressed in traditional salwar kameez, elders in this community, along with school officials, sipped tea behind her.
Baghnazargah is located in a poor section of Herat and many of the female students come from conservative families. While boys can move freely, and so attend computer tutorials outside of school, girls are only allowed to leave home to attend school. And those girls are, in a sense, the lucky ones: most girls don’t even attend high school. Like most 16-year-olds, Augiza longs to surf the Web, but she doesn’t have an email address. “This is the only way for me to learn the computer,” she says. “It gives me [a] connection to everywhere in the world.”
For students like Augiza, Mahboob is a revelation. Here is a woman less than a decade older than they are who runs her own company and flies in from Kabul on her own for ribbon-cutting ceremonies like the one on this day. She, they can see, has a position of power. Once the men have left and the formal festivities are concluded, the girls congregate around Mahboob in packs of threes and fours asking to take pictures with her.
“You have to show everybody that men and women are equal,” Mahboob says. “Women can do something if you allow them. Give them opportunity and they can prove themselves.”
In a country where the Taliban had outlawed telephones, Afghanistan has quickly wired itself in the last decade. The number of Internet users in the country has grown from 300,000 in 2006 to 1 million two years ago, according to the International Monetary Fund.
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DOD:
US military casualties in Afghanistan as of Aug. 31, 2012
Washington : DC : USA | Aug 31, 2012 By Karl Gotthardt
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This week, another nine U.S. soldiers paid the ultimate price in Afghanistan. Another 96 were wounded in action (WIA). While politicians and military commanders argue that war is going as planned, with a complete handover to Afghan Security Forces by the end of next year, the carnage continues.
One of the major concerns recently is the so-called "green on blue" deaths, which describes the killing of NATO troops at the hands of their Afghan allies. The concern over the strength of the Taliban and its infiltration into Afghan security forces continues. On Wednesday, another three NATO soldiers were killed at the hands of their Afghan allies in a "green on blue" incident.
This brings the total to 45 deaths at the hand of Afghan security forces. Most of those killed were Americans, and the U.S. military has taken to arming themselves to protect themselves against their Afghan allies.
Canada has about 950 trainers in Afghanistan, and according to the Deputy Commander of the Canadian training mission, Col. Greg Smith, Canadians have not adopted the same measures. Smith says that while the threat is on top of the mind of members of the mission, Canadians take precautions though and work in pairs alongside the Afghans.
The Associated Press reports that Australia is mourning the death of five of its soldiers. The soldiers died in two separate incidents on Wednesday and early Thursday. This is the biggest one day loss of Australian troops in Afghanistan. (Source: Global Regina)
"In a war of so many losses, this is our single worst day in Afghanistan. Indeed I believe this is the most losses in combat since the days of the Vietnam War and the Battle of Long Tan. This is news so truly shocking that it's going to feel for many Australians like a physical blow," Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard said.
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Afghan minister accused of abuses to become new intelligence chief
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By Jon Stephenson McClatchy Newspapers
KABUL, Afghanistan -- An Afghan Cabinet minister dogged by torture allegations is slated to become the new chief of Afghanistan’s notorious intelligence service, the National Directorate of Security.
The appointment of Asadullah Khalid, the minister of border and tribal affairs, will be announced within days by Afghan President Hamid Karzai, said a man who knows Khalid. A former senior government official who’s close to Karzai told McClatchy that “Khalid’s appointment has been confirmed.”
Both men spoke only on the condition of anonymity, as they weren’t authorized to speak publicly on the matter.
Khalid was the governor of the restive southern province of Kandahar, where troops from Canada were based, from 2005 to 2008. He had a notorious reputation among many Kandaharis, who say he abducted and tortured personal and political opponents, but he’s consistently denied any involvement in such activity.
In April 2010 the Canadian Broadcasting Corp. said suspicions had been widespread during Khalid’s tenure in Kandahar that “the feared governor kept a private dungeon for prisoners under his palace.” The CBC quoted top-level Canadian government documents that showed Canadian authorities had known in spring 2007 about claims of serious human-rights abuses by Khalid.
“Allegations of human rights abuses by the governor are numerous and consistent,” said one document from spring 2007. “According to multiple sources, including the U.K. embassy, the private detention centre is located under the governor’s guest house.”
Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/2012/08/30/2976936/afghan-minister-accused-of-abuses.html#storylink=cpy
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In Pakistan, a grotesque injustice
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The Globe and Mail Thursday, Aug. 23 2012
The use of Pakistan’s laws against blasphemy – which carry the death sentence – to prosecute a Christian youth who reportedly has Down syndrome is so grotesque as to almost defy belief.
Authorities were prompted to arrest the girl, who by some accounts is as young as 11 years old, after hundreds of neighbours gathered outside her family’s home in an impoverished Christian neighbourhood in Islamabad. They were angry that she had allegedly burned a learning guide to the Koran, which contains excerpts of the Islamic scriptures, for cooking fuel. The girl remains in jail, where she is so traumatized that she will not speak to visitors.
It is moderately encouraging that President Asif Ali Zardari has ordered his interior ministry to investigate the circumstances of the girl’s arrest. Mr. Zardari should go further by heeding calls to reform the laws that make it an offence to defile the Koran – even for those who do so unintentionally.
Of course, it is politically difficult for the government to repeal these criminal sanctions, which were introduced by the British in the 1860s, and then expanded under the military government of General Zia-ul-Haq in the 1980s. Despite the controversy, the laws have a high level of public support. Last year, two prominent politicians who criticized the blasphemy laws – the governor of Punjab and the federal religious minorities minister – were killed.
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